A mooted pay rise for nurses didn’t materialise, for example. And the public sector pay cap is still in place. Public sector pay awards might not even be agreed until next Summer, according to the GMB union.

The national minimum wage is to go up by 33p to just £7.83 an hour for workers over 25 outside London.

Universal Credit benefit claimants will now have access to a slightly bigger loan than before. And they won’t have their payments cut off for two weeks when switching from housing benefit.

MPs voted last week to reduce the time new Universal Credit claimants must wait before receiving any from six weeks down to four. Hammond split the difference—it will now be five weeks.

He said he couldn’t go further without keeping Universal Credit payments on a monthly basis, something that’s already causing huge problems to claimants with weekly wages.

But the whole package was framed by damning official forecasts for economic growth. These were cut sharply for the next five years.

The government’s pet forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility said its projections were significantly worse than it had forecast at the time of the budget in March.

And average wages are still expected to be lower in 2022 than they were at the start of the financial crisis in 2008.

A cut in stamp duty for first time buyers will increase the amount of money going into mortgages. That will potentially push up prices and make homes even more unaffordable - as even the official OBR forecaster pointed out.

There was a sweetener for union leaders, by making the TUC union federation part of a “partnership” to “set a strategic direction” for the training of construction workers.